This installment of “It’s Obvious. Not!” looks at: Book: “Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems” Edition: third Authors: Jerry B. Marion and Stephen T. Thornton Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Page: 52 This installation of the series provides a few clarifications into the example presented in the textbook and asks even more questions. I have a feeling that readers steeped in differential equations will immediately follow the reasoning of the example as it is written in the textbook. Please, if you have answers to the remaining questions below, or even ideas, please comment. Thanks! The first example of the chapter titled “Newtonian Mechanics” asks the reader to find the velocity of an object sliding down a ramp. The solution for the acceleration, (second derivative of the position x), has already been derived as: The process for deriving the velocity as a function of position illustrated by the author starts with the above equation for accelera...